Second Leg of The Chapman Consulting Group’s HR Briefing Series Begins in the US

The Chapman Consulting Group’s (ChapmanCG) second leg of its month long 2013 Global HR Briefing Series began today at the global headquarters of Electronic Arts in San Francisco. The Electronic Arts briefing marked the first of seven global HR get togethers that will be hosted in San Francisco and New York over the coming week. ChapmanCG is proud to have companies including Levi Strauss, Gap, Moody’s, Discovery Networks, Deutsche Bank and McGraw Hill, as hosts for the 2013 US HR briefings.

The US Global HR series follows on from our Europe Global HR series which ended last Friday in Stockholm. Successful HR sessions were also hosted by ChapmanCG Directors, Oscar Fuchs and Tim Rayner, in Reading (UK), London (UK), Lucerne (Switzerland), Zurich (Switzerland), Munich (Germany), Bonn (Germany), Paris (France), Milan (Italy), Stockholm (Sweden) and Heerlen (Holland).

Today’s session at Electronic Arts’ global headquarters was well attended by HR leaders from organisations including VM Ware, Google, Hewlett Packard, KLA Tencor, Paypal, NXP, Logitech, Informatica, Illumina, General Electric, Advent Global Solutions and Aviat Networks. Matthew Chapman, CEO of ChapmanCG, opened the session, welcoming HR leaders from Silicon Valley and the surrounding San Francisco region. 

Mala Singh, Vice President HR at Electronic Arts, opened the session with an informative presentation on how Electronic Arts has had to adapt its HR strategy to the changing market dynamics. The gaming industry has undergone rapid change in recent years, with short product cycles and the movement to decentralised production centres and teams, in various parts of the world. Mala also discussed the importance of “big data” being applied to HR decision-making. 

Tim Bonnet, HR Director at Cisco Systems, talked about Cisco’s HR strategy across emerging markets. Cisco has a defined strategy for five of its key emerging markets and another ten markets on “watch mode”. He spoke in detail about how there is now complete consistency in the talent management strategies being employed within Cisco in these emerging markets around the world. 

John Brennan, Global Head of HR for Advent Global Solutions, spoke about the company’s expansion into Asia and posed questions to the group in attendance about how to best craft a unique value proposition. HR leaders gave valid points on how the company can craft its identity, talent proposition and market development strategy. 

Tony Deblauwe, the new HR Leader of Horton Networks, and previously from Citrix, talked about the need to customise HR programs and strategies to local markets and the need to avoid pushing down centralised policies. HR Leaders enjoyed sharing ideas and common themes, particularly around rapid business development in Asian markets and the associated talent challenges. Employer branding remains a hot topic, as does the importance of being able to read data to make intelligent business and HR decisions.